Following the map Pearl sent, which I open on my phone, I go down the second hallway to the right and follow signs toward the east wing. I pass bathrooms, benches, lamps. The hall picks up an oriental runner. One wall sports a cluster of ocean paintings. The work looks familiar, so I stop and check the siggy—and it’s someone I know: Simone Voors.
The hall widens, and the floors gleam in the light from domed glass fixtures situated on the ceiling every eight or so feet.
I pass doors with brass-plate labels: STUDY…MEDITATION…COUNSEL. Then my hall runs into another. The diagram Pearl sent isn’t clear, so I go right, and up six stairs, and through some double doors labeled FELLOWSHIP.
I find myself in a two-story space about the size of a tennis court. Windows punched near the top of the walls send rectangles of orange light streaming down to the tile floor. Chairs and tables are pushed against one wall.
There’s a warm cinnamon smell, like cinnamon apples, and the unmistakable aroma of fresh bread. I turn to my right and see a swinging steel door, and beyond it, someone in white garb and a hair net.
So this is where people eat. My eyes magnet-snap to a framed canvas on the wall beside the kitchen door. It’s a forest scene—pretty well-done; in a clearing in the middle of the painted grove, there is a table, and atop the table, text: Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.
“May I help you?” I turn, and there’s someone standing in the kitchen door—a friendly my-mom’s-aged woman with large brown eyes and a slick pony-tail.
“Hey…hi.” I stride over and hold my hand out to shake hers, but she holds it up, revealing plastic gloves coated with something white and powdery.
“Can’t do that. Where are you trying to get to?”
“Uh…” I look at my phone. “Atrium G.”
“You’re a little off track, but not too much. See those doors?” She points to a set of double doors on the room’s other side—beige just like the wall, so I hadn’t noticed them. “Go through those and you’ll be in a garden. Indoor garden. There’s some halls. You’re going to take the one behind the fountain. You’ll be walking for a while. Go past all the prayer rooms. There’ll be a bank of windows. Take a right, and that’s your place.” Her thin brows narrow, and her mouth pinches. “I’m just going to guess that you’re the painter.”
I hoot out a laugh. “Am I that obvious?”
She winks. “It’s your accent. I heard that the painter’s from New York, and I can hear that New York in you.”
That makes me laugh again. “Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah. You’re a city boy. I’m a city girl myself. Grew up in Oakland.”
Someone else—a younger boy, dressed like my new friend—appears behind her, and she holds her messy hands up. “Just do that. You’ll be all right, New York.”
I wonder as I push through the door if that’s true—if I’ll be all right, or if I’ve come here to a church to be destroyed.
The garden room is fucking crazy. Like a real garden—smells like dirt and looks like a rainbow of flowers, plus a few huge trees. I see an iron bench gleaming between the leaves and almost sit down. But a glance at my phone shows I’m already six minutes late, and I know Pearl is waiting.
I follow the cook’s directions and find myself in what I recognize from pictures as Atrium G. The domed ceiling rises up at least sixty feet above me, and the square footage seems about as much as an Olympic-sized pool—if the pool had square dimensions.
The ceiling is made of delicate wood beams, glass panes, and panes made of blue stained glass. There’s a partial wall over to my right—beyond the wall’s opening, I can see corridor, which I know from maps is the building’s main drag—and, to my left, a wall of windows with a door that leads to a fruit garden, if the church’s maps can be believed.
I look up at all the blue glass in the ceiling. Bluer than it looks in pictures. Then I drift toward the wall in front of me. It’s an ideal canvas…as wide as a movie screen, and 60 feet tall—about the height of two movie theater screens stacked. I requested it be covered with a layer of cement before I arrived, and I see they did as I asked.
I step close enough so I can touch it, my boots scrrushing on the plastic blanket they’ve got covering the floor. I tilt my head up, transposing the image in my head onto the wall.
That’s when I hear footsteps.
I know before I turn around. The way you always know when something unseen strings out taut between you. Warmth hits my cheeks like a slap. My neck starts to sweat, and when I try to drag air into my lungs, they burn, like I need the inhaler.